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Thursday, February 23, 2017

U.S. Military Eyes & Ears in the Arctic

US-NATO are intercepting Russian and global communications and militarizing the island of
Svalbard in violation of Norway-Russia treaty that outlaws military use
of the island.

In his landmark book entitled 'The Satellite War' Norwegian journalist Bard Wormdal reports the following about Svalbard:

Svalbard is the best location for a ground station serving
Polar-orbiting satellites....Only Svalbard is situated close enough to
the North Pole to enable a ground station to download data from all
[satellite] flights overhead....The satellites can be controlled and
data downloaded during the 15 minutes they are visible from Svalbard
before they pass the North Pole and are visible to a station in Alaska
for another 15 minutes....By setting a satellite on a fixed course
around the North and South Poles it is then possible to gain images of
all sections of the planet in the space of a full day. That is why most
earth observation satellites travel in a Polar orbit.

The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 established full Norwegian sovereignty over
the archipelago....The preamble to the treaty stipulates that the
Islands must only be used for peaceful purposes, and Article 9 states
that Svalbard "may never be used for warlike purposes."

In the year 2000 Norway and the US entered into a mutual formal
agreement to develop space co-operation [at Svalbard]....Norway wants
the US to pay for a fiber cable....The US Armed Forces inject $25
million, or one-third of the total cost. It goes without saying the
Pentagon wants something in return.

The US currently has at least 104 military satellites....With the
new generation of weather and environmental satellites the focus is
changing from "dealing with the weather" to utilizing data on the
atmosphere and conditions in outer space directly in warfare.

Svalbard is the best location for a ground station serving Polar-orbiting satellites. Only Svalbard is situated close enough to the North Pol to enable a ground station to download data from all satellite flights overhead. Svalbard can communicate with satellites in all the 14 orbits a satellite completes around the Earth in the space of 24 hours.

Twenty years ago the Pentagon almost always only used their own
satellites for communication. Private corporations now supply 80-90% of
all [military] satellite communication.